Order and Chaos
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: A gunslinger and a needle freak camp out on a beach. It's like the start of a bad joke. RolandEddie.


The sun is a blinding, white light in the sky and the world is silent save for the crashing of the waves. No birds are singing. No cars are whirring by on the highway below an apartment window. Eddie Dean is very, very far from home.

He blinks, rubs his eyes, and sits up. His back aches. He thinks to himself that took his bed for granted back in the world he came from. He swivels his head around and sees the gunslinger, surprisingly, asleep. He isn't even really lying down, he's just leaning against a rock But his chest is rising and falling in what's almost loud enough to qualify as a snore. Imagine that, Eddie thinks. The gunslinger snoring.

As if he can sense Eddie looking at him, Roland stirs awake, grunting softly. Eddie debates pretending he's still asleep to spare Roland the embarrassment of having the junkie wake up before him, then decides it isn't worth it. "Rise and shine," he offers. As usual, he gets no response out of the gunslinger, who only gets up on his feet and starts to try to get their makeshift campfire alight again.

Eddie gets up and stretches, raising his arms up behind his head until he can feel the joints in his shoulders crack and pop. His eyes close as he puts his head backand when he opens them Roland is staring at him.

"What? Don't you gunslingers stretch?"

"Waving your arms does nothing for sore joints," Roland says frankly, sounding like an advice manual. "Don't they teach you proper stretching in your world?" It would have sounded rude coming from anybody else's mouth, but not Roland's.

"Well, there's yoga, but that's only for old ladies."

"What?"

"Forget it," Eddie says crabbily. He keeps neglecting to remember that this was the man who'd thought a bar was a mystical tower of truth or something.

Roland starts trying to stoke the fire again. The sun is so bright that Eddie figures it's a good time for a fire. What time is it anyways? It feels early, but it's too bright to be early. He could really do with a watch right now. He hadn't exactly had time to pack a bag for this inter-dimensional road trip.

He walks forward without thinking about it and his foot connects with Roland's wood pile, sending the twigs scattering across the sandy ground. Roland doesn't look particularly upset. Then again, Roland has about three expressions in his repertoire; the grimace, the 'curious and genuinely listening to what Eddie is saying,' and the 'What the hell is Eddie saying.'

"Sorry," Eddie mutters, and kneels down to re-pile the sort of firewood. "'M tired. Why can't I just sleep some more? Why don't we just sleep all day? We don't have anywhere to go." Roland gives him the 'What the hell is Eddie saying' look. "Oh. Right. Your Tower. But that's not like, immediate, is it? And we're not really going anywhere right now. Will it be that fucking detrimental to you to just sleep a little longer?"

"The more I sleep, the more of the day I will miss."

"I guess that's fair, but I don't really see what there is to miss." Talking to Roland makes Eddie uncomfortable in a way he's never been uncomfortable before. Here is a man who's seen him naked, in the physical and mental sense. Here's a man who's been inside his head, but also seen him butt-naked with a dealer putting fingers up his asshole. Roland Deschain has seen him angry, terrified, and grieving, and yet Eddie has never seen Roland so much as shed a tear.

Roland finally succeeds in getting the fire going. Its orange flame is starkly contrasted against the white sand. "I don't think you understand," Roland says, almost to himself. "The Tower never leaves me. It's there when I sleep. It's there when I am awake."

"Well, if it's staying in one place, good for it. I'm hungry."

"There is a little lobstrosity meat from the night before. The bastards are quiet today. Perhaps they're asleep." Roland chuckles and produces some more of the pink, crab-like meat. It smells revolting. Roland starts warming it over the fire, and Eddie can't help wondering why Roland is so damn efficient at stuff like cooking and cleaning-or at least the closest to cooking and cleaning one can get with a campfire and a hut made of sticks. Eddie supposes it takes a good cook to be able to make do with that. If you just slapped an apron on him and put him in a kitchen, the guy could probably be the next Betty Crocker.

Eddie rubs his eyes again, realizing how heavy he feels. Maybe it's withdrawal. Maybe he's just tired. Maybe it's both. The sun is beating down now, warming his face. If he shuts his eyes, it's like he's on vacation. On a beach in the Bahamas or something.

Roland pokes him in the ribs with one of the fingers on his good hand, making him wince. "Food."

"Oh." Yeah. A vacation in the Bahamas. And this shit is lobster from the Pacific, boiled by the finest chefs at his fine-ass resort. Eddie bites into it. It's crunchy and tasteless, as usual. "Can't we eat anything else?"

"Once you are well and we can move on." Is that caring in the gunslinger's voice? Like he actually wants him to feel better and isn't just impatient to get moving to find his fucking Tower? Nah. Eddie thinks he must be imagining it. "I'm sure there are many foods here you've never had."

"Yeah. Right. I'm gonna be the Anthony Bourdain of Midworld." Roland looks at him blankly. "I'm gonna try a lot of foods," Eddie paraphrases. "But I wouldn't want to get in the way of your Tower quest. Maybe you can drop me off in the neighboring town and I can just eat my fill while you do the Tower searching."

"You don't understand. You're coming too. You _must_ come too."

Eddie groans. "I'm never gonna get out of this, am I?" Just as he was starting to think this wasn't so bad, leave it to Roland to ruin it by reminding him that he's essentially a prisoner. Isn't that what Roland calls him? The Prisoner? Maybe he's indirectly making fun of him or something.

"But for now," Roland says, handing him another piece of lobstrosity even though he didn't ask. "For now, we stay here." He doesn't elaborate, and Eddie finds he's kind of sick and tired of pretending he wants to eat this shit just to feed Roland's cooking ego.

He downs a bit of water to wash away the salty aftertaste of the lobstrosity. He still has that lazy sleep-haze in his head, and Eddie Dean can't help thinking this is probably the safest he's ever been. Certainly not the most comfortable, but he's pretty sure nothing is gonna get to him as long as Roland is around. Reliable source of food and water, albeit shitty food and water. No dealers or junkies after him. No Henry Dean. No anybody except him and the gunslinger. And the lobstrosities, but they don't count.

Fuck your sleep schedule, Roland, he thinks, and lets his eyes drift closed again. He blinks, and in the millisecond his eyes are open he can see the gunslinger smiling at him.

* * *

><p><strong>Really like how this came out, actually. Roland is a difficult character for me to write, but Eddie comes incredibly naturally to me, I barely have to think at all writing him but with a Roland I have to do a lot of thinking. So it's an interesting contrast.<strong>


End file.
